I think in the future we'll have region-coded Oscars. If you live in market A, the version you receive will contain several wins for people from your home state. Market B will have slightly different results to favour their state.

Consistency will be enforced through ubiquitous content aware firewalling.

I was going to skip over this post because I hate the Oscars, which is seldom a useful contribution on a thread about it. But since that is actually the theme of the post, I'm going to agree.

I probably wouldn't dislike them so much if there were some films from Hollywood in the last year I'd actually felt compelled to watch. Then I could be cheering for my preferences, and even if they didn't win there'd at least be some tension. But unfortunately no trailer for the entirety of a year has had me willing to risk the $50 it always seems to cost me. I think of all the other actually enjoyable things I could do with $50. Indeed, I think of a great many things I can do for free that I'd enjoy more.

But I do have to temper my comment by also saying that I've never liked the Oscars, even when I did actually like Hollywood movies. They're one of those things that you had to be there for. Good on them for having their award ceremony, but it's not a great deal more interesting than a school prizegiving.

Neither do I, but for Kate whatserface to suggest that Cameron Diaz was worst dressed (Kate in her Victorian tablecloth of a top) needs fucking glasses. Diaz could be in pyjamas and still look sexy.Plus I liked The Descendants, and probably because George was in it, but also because of the oh so common, day in the life of aspect. Still as Ben Wilson suggests, school(ed) prize giving.

Diaz, really? I don't find her that sexy. Probably doesn't help that she's a poor actress and generally chooses rubbish movies.

But I also liked The Descendants okay. It was probably the best of a mediocre to bad bunch. Not that I have high expectations of the Academy's judgment, but it was a particularly lame selection this year.

She wasn't worst dressed. I think she has a very hot bod, considering she does none of the dieting,exercise fads. She surfs and does a bit of sport. Pretty sexy if you can get it, in my book anyhow. Sorry to say it, I can't find movies seriously important. Maybe she doesn't either.... <exits stage left>

FWIW I thought the problem with the Iron Lady wasn't Streep's performance - she did stray into caricature at times (the way she walked was very like the Spitting Image version of Thatcher) but The Lady herself became something of a self caricature over time.

It was more that the film was unbalanced, with Streep/Thatcher overwhelming the other performers, who were mostly reduced to uttering feeder lines.

I thought it would have been better if they'd scrapped the supporting cast completely and just had Streep do a - much shorter - solo performance.

Something along the lines of Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' series, only perhaps not written by Bennett given his bilious views about Thatcher.

Gotta back Sofie. Diaz is sexy. Her look has never been sophisticated so I can imagine, without even seeing the Oscars, that she might pale on the costume front. But my eye would still be drawn to her slender body, and naturally beautiful face, and the slightly goofy movement that often accompanies being very tall and surrounded by short men.

It was more that the film was unbalanced, with Streep/Thatcher overwhelming the other performers, who were mostly reduced to uttering feeder lines.

It's not even that that bothered me, but what's the point of a bio-pic of a politician where nobody involved takes the politics at all seriously? Somehow, I suspect Daniel Day Lewis will have more to do in Spielberg's Lincoln biopic than dispense ghost chips to his drunken senile old bat of a wife.

But Broadbent is carving out a nice niche for himself playing the put-upon husband of aging batty English women.

Or in Longford, playing an aging batty peer with a put-upon but elegantly exasperated wife, played by Lindsay Duncan. (She also did a rather nice Thatcher in a 2009 tele-film which wisely narrowed the focus to her resignation. Duncan delivered a performance off a decent script that took her politics – and political life – seriously. Streep delivered a clean, souless impersonation at the heart of a burlesque. Or at least if you’re going to do Carry On, Milksnatcher! do it with a wink and a wiggle like this…

(I have my doubts Ted Heath actually behaved as if his virtue was going to be outraged by every woman that crossed his path, but Samuel West gets in touch with his inner Kenneth Williams with admirable conviction. )

The one and only problem I ever have with award ceremonies is that I am very likely, indeed it is certain, not to have seen any of the films. I watch them primarily, okay only, for the acceptance speeches. All of the ones I saw this year were courtesy of youtube - I really liked Meryl Streep's but then I love her to bits and pieces. But otherwise, blah.